Natasha Lombardi as Cricket, a newcomer to Sonora, in Chris Brown’s “The Other Kids,” playing next Sunday, Feb. 12, and Feb. 13, as part of San Francisco’s Indiefest at the Roxie Theater.

Natasha Lombardi as Cricket, a newcomer to Sonora, in Chris Brown’s “The Other Kids,” playing next Sunday, Feb. 12, and Feb. 13, as part of San Francisco’s Indiefest at the Roxie Theater.

Photo: CB Films

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Isaac Sanchez as Isaac in Chris Brown's "The Other Kids," playing Sunday, Feb. 12, and Monday, Feb. 13, as part of San Francisco's Indiefest at the Roxie Theater. Photo courtesy of CB Films.

Isaac Sanchez as Isaac in Chris Brown's "The Other Kids," playing Sunday, Feb. 12, and Monday, Feb. 13, as part of San Francisco's Indiefest at the Roxie Theater. Photo courtesy of CB Films.

Photo: CB Films

‘Other Kids’: High school movie with real kids

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Filmmaker Chris Brown was only 10 when he started developing certain habits, describing himself as “a little puppet-master director.” Each moment was storyboarded; his directions to his actors were exact. But with his latest award-winning film, “The Other Kids” — screening at San Francisco’s Indiefest — the Bay Area native, whose previous features as a director include “Daughters” (1996), “Scared New World” (2005) and “Fanny, Annie & Danny” (2010), surrenders all of that to forge a new path.

“I’m looking for a liveliness. I’m looking to be surprised or shocked. I don’t want it to come from me,” says Brown over coffee on a recent Sunday morning.

The San Francisco writer-director found all that in Tuolumne County working with high school students, their parents and other assorted residents of Sonora. He describes “The Other Kids” as “fictumentary” for the way it blends fiction with elements from his cast’s real lives.

The film plays out in cinema verite fashion as high school graduation nears and the students face not only the sometimes trying circumstances of their daily lives, but also the uncertainty of the future. The teens share writing credit with their director.

“I always wanted to do something about high school that wasn’t just another high school movie,” says Brown. “It wasn’t a retread of a hundred other movies that you’ve seen a million times, but it was something that related to my high school experience, something that I could relate to.

“And it wasn’t some middle-aged guy looking back. It wasn’t nostalgia. It was something that really was about kids right now, that they could contribute to. Just something true. Something honest.”

Inspiration for “The Other Kids” started with a volunteer project that Brown collaborated on with another group of teens. He decided to forgo a script in favor of improvisation for that short project and was so happy with the results that he wanted to do something more. Then one day while visiting Sonora, a town he already knew well from having visited relatives in the area over the years, what that something was came into sharp focus.

“Sonora is this old Western town that, in many ways, hasn’t changed in 140 years; there are these facades from the 1860s,” Brown says. “I saw kids skateboarding past one of these facades, and I was struck by that clash of old and new, and classic and modern. That’s a movie. What’s it like? What would it be like to be a 17-year-old here? That was kind of the beginning of it.”

After obtaining permission from the boards overseeing Sonora’s two high schools, Sonora and Summerville, Brown announced open auditions held over two weekends. The response was tremendous, the director figuring he saw nearly every 16- to 18-year-old in town. He already had his eye on a few, having seen them in the art and drama classes he had been invited to observe while his proposal was being considered.

“I put them through some paces,” Brown says. “They had to do a monologue and they had to do an improv. I’d pick two people at random and just put them together. ‘Here’s the situation. Here’s the relationship. Go.’

“I was looking for kids that I really could relate to, that I just liked, where there was just something. After everybody was cast, we just sat around and talked, just got to know each other.”

Discussions and improvisations led to a 92-day shooting schedule. It was by far Brown’s longest shoot, nearly four times the 25-day schedule he was used to. He had a lot of choices in the editing room for a film that runs a lean 94 minutes.

“I didn’t think it would last that long, but it just kept getting better and better and better, and the kids were going deeper and deeper and deeper,” Brown says.